"Apple Inc reported quarterly revenue that slightly missed Wall Street expectations as sales of its flagship iPhone came in below target, sending its shares down more than 4 percent. The world's largest technology company shipped 47.8 million iPhones, lower than the roughly 50 million that Wall Street analysts had predicted. Sales of the iPad came in at 22.9 million in the fiscal first quarter, about in line with forecasts." I'll leave the financials to the experts, but one thing that stood out to me: Apple sold 4.2 million Macs, almost a million below expectations. How much of a future does desktop computing have at Apple? Update: The NYT/Reuters changed the title during the night. Fixed it.

We are seeing the computing power in these mobile devices increase at a rather rapid pace, so is the 'future' of desktop computing a 'tablet' to which you connect a keyboard/mouse (and alternatively a larger screen) if/when you want to use it as a 'desktop pc'?

Current ARM SOCs are no faster than x86 cpus from the early 2000s. It will take many years before tablets and phones are powerful enough to replace desktops.

Current ARM SOCs are no faster than x86 cpus from the early 2000s. It will take many years before tablets and phones are powerful enough to replace desktops.

I understand what you mean but it's actually not quite true. Desktop have become WAY more powerful than needed by most people. If say 95% of the people only uses 20% of their desktop processing power at all time (which is just a wild guess but I bet is probably not far from reality), then it means that for 95% of people they can replace what they have with a computer only 20% as powerful. Especially that tablets and the likes have OSes that are specifically optimized for weaker CPUs, so they don't waste as much as heavier OSes.

Sure there's always going to be the exceptions, the people who needs every single MIPS they can get from their desktop, but these people are the exception.